AMA: ThoughtSpot SVP, Revenue Strategy, Operations and Enablement, Kelley Jarrett on Revenue Ops Career Path

Knowing how to manipulate, share and wield data, tech and processes for efficiency gains is valuable in many functions outside of operations. While doing your 'day job' - keep your eyes open to where these skills play in your org. My revops role came later in my career (after many other functional roles), and I was a more valuable asset for having seen other parts of the organization, especially those we now partner closely with in RevOps. I have seen many sales enablement, solutions consulting ...Read More

I organize my decisions using the following (very simple) framework. So far, it has guided me to work in some amazing environments for some incredible leaders and with high performing teams. Hope it helps you! Who - direct leadership is critically important to career growth and should be considered at every move. I always ask myself - what do I need from a leader in this role? Do I need them to be an expert b/c I am new to the function? Do I need them to be amazing at exec alignment and reportin ...Read More

Just like all roles in a healthy, growing organization, you need to tie your work to one of three things: revenue, cost savings or efficiency. In a supporting role like RevOps, this may seem hard - but it's not as hard as it seems. Surfacing real problems in your org through data to your stakeholders will improve their efficiency and focus them on the right tasks that will allow them to see ways to drive revenue or reduce costs. Keep this circle in mind and quantify it - ensure you understand th ...Read More

I like to start my week with data, and I ask my team to do the same. Luckily with the rise in self service BI - and even more progress from companies like ThoughtSpot in AI for business intelligence - we're moving away from waiting for the business leaders to ask questions for us to answer - allow us to spend MORE time being business partners to our fellow leaders. Sitting with the data each Monday morning, I like to answer three questions: What's going well? Which teams had a good week that des ...Read More

Rev Ops will continue to shift from reacting/responding/executing to proactively offering insights and training business users how to self-serve their data needs. it will about activating process and tech vs. doing all the work for your partners. AI tools will become critically important. Learn it, know it, use it. It may seem counterintuitive to a RevOps professional to put self service in the hands of business, but shifting mindset to the benefits - opening you and your teams up to perform mor ...Read More

AI is changing everything. I would argue that prior to AI in business intelligence, self service really didn't exist. At least not in the way business leaders really need. AI brings the gift of natural language and automated insights to allow non technical and business leaders the ability to get real-time answers to questions in a conversational environment - before AI, dashboards had to be created and filters made...and if your leader asked for one small change, it would have to be rebuilt by y ...Read More

Moving from manager to director is a big step in operations. You have to think about things differently - managing existing workflows and people management is critically important, but the director level will introduce a new way of operating - essentially, you are directing growth, efficiency, team structure and change that your manager layer will execute. It will be important to think not only of your team (which is critically important) but also about the company health - how your org can bett ...Read More

This is such a great question; we're in a ruthless prioritization exercise with my team right now and forcing each other and ourselves to ask this question in all parts of our business. Beyond ensuring I had in place a strong AI for BI tool (like ThoughtSpot) - which is priority number 1, I would use (and am using) my limited time to activate our team to more effectively run revops functional tasks in the right place across NA, Europe and India to nail an async, global team working environment. ...Read More